Why Ethnography, Julian Orr?

Why does Julian Orr decide use ethnography to answer his question about the role of work practice in technician-industry relations and technician identity? In Orr’s Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (1996), we see an example of ethnography from social anthropology. Clearly, “Orr chose ethnography because he is an anthropologist” is not a sufficient answer. Students seeking the implications of research questions and philosophical-methodological approaches for appropriate research methods deserve a more in-depth response.

(1) I would like to uncover the origins of Orr’s decision to use ethnography. I say uncover, because at no point is Orr explicit about this decision.

(2) Orr’s narrative only offers implicit justification for ethnography, so I propose additional justifications as an exercise in deciding to pursue ethnography.

Orr comes at his study through the literature on changing modes of production and the “problematic” (152) impact on workers. He agrees with the intent of the literature on how relations between workers, corporations and the production system relate to changing worker identities. Alienation of workers has profound social affects, most importantly on worker identities. As workers become “de-skilled” (150), “occupational communities” (151) of workers become more important. However, Orr attests that many related studies ignore an important component, the idea that “work practice” can also impact worker identity. Informed by his own work as a technician, he observes the lives of copy machine service technicians as a participant. Short of justifying his decision to conduct ethnography, Orr “considers” the day-to-day of industrial technicians to be a “rewarding subject for ethnographies of work” (152).

Luckily, Orr’s findings support the research that he was trying to build on. However, although ethnography is a reward in and of itself, there are other factors implicitly driving Orr’s methodological choice. After reading John Searle’s Constructing Social Reality (1995), I cannot help but note the layers of contextual meaning hidden in the technicians’ work lives. Four key words from his study offer clues—practice, control, stories, and identity. For example, to understand a practice it must be observed. My telling you what my work entails is different than you observing my work and interpreting it based on your research criteria. Second, Orr’s technicians had limited control over their environment. How the technicians negotiated externally imposed reality, such as the corporation’s service documentation, requires adaptation, resistance or blind acceptance, depending on the context. Third, through their war stories the technician’s created both community as well as an undocumented pool of knowledge as a foundation for their skill development. Finally, since part of Orr’s research goal was to understand technician identity, it makes sense to observe the technicians in context (the C in Searle’s “X counts as Y in C”).

For these reasons ethnography is an appropriate method for Orr’s study of relationships and identity; it gives contextual answers, allows patterns of work practice to emerge from technician behavior over time, and exposes the researcher to internally created realities (stories) and external realities (customers/corporation/machines) to give a holistic picture.

Disclaimer: The trick with reverse-engineering an argument for the use of a method after the research is finished is that it is difficult to know how much one is influenced by the research findings. Nevertheless, I hope this process is useful in getting us to think about the amount of (worthwhile) effort needed to design a study based on solid methodological foundations.